I heard the whispers though. People questioning her judgment or assuming I was just a passing fancy. When she was with me, it was easy to ignore them, but now all the doubts had crowded into my mind along with the frustration and terror that something really bad had happened to her.
And Draven. The prince I loved beyond reason. Who had used my lower status as a courtier to hurt and humiliate me. He’d done it to protect me from his mother’s machinations, but that didn’t make the wound any less raw. Nor did it help with all the insecurity I was feeling now.
I was so lost in my thoughts that I almost ran into Alaric when he suddenly stopped in front of me. Roth missed the message though.
“Oof!” They collided with me, causing me to bump into Alaric, who turned to glare at us both.
He peered around me. “Are you seriously reading a book right now, Roth?”
I turned, and sure enough, Roth had unwound the ropes on one of their forearms just enough to hold a small jar full of glowing stones. A little makeshift Fae lantern. How adorable. I filed it away to tease Roth about later. Ideally, when I wasn’t trapped in an enclosed space with them.
“We don’t know for sure how to open the door,” they said defensively. “My brothers might be confident they can muscle their way through it, but I’d prefer to have an actual plan besidessmashy smashy.”
“It’s a perfectly good plan, Rothie Bear,” Desmond called from where he’d stopped at the front of the line. “And might, in fact, be necessary because there’s supposed to be a door here according to the map . . . but there isn’t.”
“Let me see.” Roth shoved past me and Alaric, grumbling something about being surrounded by idiots. They studied the wall, and we all did the same. The only sources of light were the few Fae lanterns we’d brought with us and Roth’s jar of glowing stones, but our eyesight was more than good enough to see our surroundings, which consisted of compact dirt.
Ceiling, floor, walls . . . all dirt. It was a little unnerving because there weren’t any support beams anywhere. Logic said that this tunnel should have caved in years ago—if not immediately—but we’d been walking underground for at least a mile, and there were no signs of any weakness anywhere.
It must have been made by the Seelie Fae and their earth magic. I was surprised that it had remained standing all this time though. Most of the Fae spells had burnt out and we’d had to replenish them with our own magic.
As spectacular as the construction of this tunnel was, our trip was pointless if we had no way of entering the Sovereign House from it.
“Are you sure we’re in the area?” I squeezed past Alaric to take the map from Taivan. “Or maybe it was marked incorrectly?”
I frowned at the fading lines and scribbles written in what I was guessing was Unseelie. If not for those hastily written words, I wouldn’t even think this was the real thing. House Devereux had managed to successfully keep their treasure trove of Fae artifacts and writings hidden from the rest of the Moroi. While Roth might have been obsessed with Fae poetry, their family treasured something else—details about how all the Houses were constructed, including ways to break into and out of them.
I’d been impressed by it all, but Alaric had scowled so hard, I was surprised his face wasn’t permanently stuck like that. He hadn’t been pleased to learn that House Harker was included in their “information gathering” and that they knew all of our strengths and weaknesses.
It was thanks to their paranoia though that we had an undetected way into the Sovereign House, so he’d held his tongue. Mostly. Now we just needed to find the damn door.
Alaric reached for the map, but Roth was faster, snatching it from my hands.
“This is definitely the place,” they murmured, casting their eyes from the map to the wall and back again. “Some type of illusion spell maybe?” Roth folded the map up and tucked it into the book before shoving both into a bag at their waist. “See if you can feel some type of release or glyph carved into the wall. Don’t trust your eyes.”
We each took a section of the wall and started searching. I ran my fingers across the cool earth, but nothing stood out. My frustration grew over the next few minutes, and I wasn’t alone in that. It hadn’t been easy to avoid all the patrols and find the entrance to this tunnel.
If it had all been for nothing?—
I choked back the wounded sound that tried to escape, but there was nothing I could do against the anguish rising in my gut, filling my thoughts and my soul with a hopeless despair I didn’t know how to fight. Losing either Samara or Draven was unimaginable. Losing them both . . . I would never come back from that.
My search became more desperate. Nails shifted to claws as I tried to tear my way through the dirt. Blood scented the air, and then Alaric was cursing and pulling me away.
Just as I started to push past him and continue my frantic attempt at getting through, the wall trembled. Everyone froze. In an instant, all of Roth’s family had their swords out. Taivan grabbed Roth and shoved his younger sibling behind their parents.
The wall exploded, the clumps of dirt hanging in the air for a few seconds before falling to the ground. I had my own sword free, as did Alaric, as we waited for the attack to come.
It never did.
“Forgive me, but this is a rescue mission, is it not? Shouldn’t you all be moving a little quicker?” an amused voice asked. Dust still floated in the air, preventing me from seeing the person who spoke, but I recognized the voice.
In an instant, I was past the crumbled wall and in what appeared to be the dungeon—the map had been right after all, for the location at least. Whoever had said there’d been a door there had either been mistaken or had known some trick that we didn’t.
None of that mattered though as my fingers closed around the bars that separated a cell from the rest of the room. Vibrant blue eyes threaded with red met mine.
“Hello, lover,” Draven purred. “Out for a midnight stroll?”
“You know me,” I replied, my voice catching. “A bit of a restless sleeper.”
